June 8, 2018 17 00 -18000

May 2017

Gender in Leadership: Part 4

Mother Teresa’s Personal Characteristics

“Leader’s communication skills are very important to implement any decision in an organization through people. Communication is the ability to identify with people and relate to them” (Maxwell, 2010, p. 3). In order to relate to people there are essential communication skills. “These communication skills are linking, envisioning, and regulating. While linking skills include team building, envisioning involves creating visions. Additionally, regulating means negotiation and managing changes” (Wren, 1995, p. 431). Mother Teresa’s communication skills allowed her to build her team of nuns serving the poor and creating the vision for the success of her goal. Moreover, she had the power to adapt and regulate to several changes in circumstances around her especially due to diversity of cultures everywhere. Additionally, as mentioned by Moodian (2009) that there are three things that make the superwoman: a fertile mind, a deep understanding, and a cultivated taste (p. 5). Mother Teresa can be considered a superwoman through the greatest gifts of generosity she had, including her open and fertile mindset with deep understanding to different cultures which allowed her to achieve her dream goal in serving the poor. “What distinguishes great leaders from merely good ones? It is not IQ or technical skills; it is emotional intelligence” (Goleman, 1996, p. 3). The five skills of emotional intelligence are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill. These skills of emotional intelligence influence the leader’s ability to move an organization forward through productive group formation and collaboration (Goleman, 1996). One of the main reasons for the success of Mother Teresa in her mission is her emotional intelligence skills. As a female leader, Mother Teresa had very high empathy toward the poor and her social skills with the nuns and the people were incredible associated with great motivations to help fulfil her dream in serving the poor.

As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

1 Peter 4:10

No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas for how you can get better. So for me, the most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try to get better – because your job is to try to help everybody else get better.

Jim Yong Kim

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